Elizabeth Chatterjee

Elizabeth Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of Environmental History and the College at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on India’s energy history from 1900 to the present, emphasizing how non-Western perspectives reshape understandings of capitalist development and climate change. She holds appointments in the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), Southern Asian Studies, and International Relations, and serves on the board of the UChicago Center in Delhi.

Education: DPhil (University of Oxford, 2015). Research interests include energy infrastructure, environmental politics, South Asian development, and the Anthropocene. Recent courses taught explore energy history, environmental governance in the Global South, and the history of Indian capitalism.

Her book manuscript Electric Democracy (under contract with UChicago Press) analyzes electricity’s role in India’s political economy since colonial times. Ongoing projects include studies of the 1970s energy crisis in the global South and the historical role of cow dung energy. She regularly contributes to podcasts discussing environmental history and development.

Professional activities include editorial work for Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India and service on academic committees. Research focuses on multisystemic Earth Science methodologies and the intersection of energy, class, and state power.